Re: Somewheres

On 2024-09-02, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:

Some southern Italian dialects have dropped a few final vowels, but
this does not extend to northern dialects or the mainstream version of
the language.

Okay, this opportunity is as good as any to mention something I've
been burning to post ever since I re-read it in Akire/Rosen:

Have you ever wondered why the third person plural present tense
forms of Italian verbs are so strangely stressed, e.g., pàrlano
instead of *parlàno?  And where is that -o from anyway?  Spanish
doesn't have it and if you look at Latin (-ant), there's no source
for it.

Oh, you haven't wondered? ;-)

Apparently Old Italian had the expected ending -an, so what happened?
The blame goes to the 'to be' word.  The Latin first singular "sum"
and third plural "sunt" both ended up regularly as "son" in Old
Italian.  But that was the only first person form that didn't have
-o, so eventually it picked one up, producing "sono".  Now, since
the first singular and third plural had already merged, "sono" also
became the third pural.  And from there the -o spread to the third
plural of all other verbs, but as a latecomer it didn't move the
stress.

It's an intriguing explanation, especially since it includes two
developments that ran in opposite directions: First the addition
of -o from many forms to one, then the spread of -o from one form
to many.  I would guess the strong overall tendency toward open
syllables in Italian had something to do with it.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de